Marcus Aurelius

"What pulls the strings is the force hidden within there lies ... The real man."

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

"God give me patience, to reconcile with what I am not able to changeGive me strength to change what I canAnd give me wisdom to distinguish one from another."

"He is so rich, he has no room to shit."

"Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself."

"Will any man despise me? Let him see to it. But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that deserves to be despised."

"You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say."

"How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks."

"All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere."

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."

"Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished."

"If thou workest at that which is before thee ... Expecting nothing fearing nothing but satisfied with thy present activity according to Nature and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this."